12/22, 11:20pm

Apple vs RIM market share

Apple has closed the gap with RIM in the smartphone market and leads in initial consumer satisfaction, according to a recent ChangeWave survey. The iPhone has steadily increased its market share, growing from just 11 percent in June to 23 percent in the December survey. Momentum continued well after the 3G launch, with a gain of six points from September to December. BlackBerry devices have held a fairly level dominance, with a slight drop of one point to 41 percent in the same period.

12/22, 5:30pm

HP Compaq Mini 700 netbook

HP's Compaq brand has launched a 10.2-inch netbook in Europe, the Compaq Mini 700, which boasts a 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU along with integrated GMA950 graphics processor and 1GB of RAM. The Mini 700 also sports a 1024x600 resolution display and a keyboard sized at 92 percent of a full-size computer's in a package that is just under one inch thick. Options include a Wi-Fi module, Bluetooth capabilities and HSDPA network access. The netbook's 1.8-inch, 60GB, 4,200RPM hard disk drive comes pre-loaded with Windows XP home.

12/22, 5:10pm

BUGLabs intros module

BUGLabs has recently announced it will be introducing its BUGvonHippel breakout board module for Java/BUG software developers which includes a female USB 2.0 port. Named after MIT Professor Eric Von Hippel who authored Democratizing Innovation, the device has a female breakout board and direct connections to the circuit board for standard size wires. Users can connect power, DAC, serial and grounds as well as others to the BUGvonHippel module.

12/22, 5:05pm

Nokia shows 8800 Gold Arte

Nokia has announced yet another variation of its 8800 slider phone, the Gold Arte. As the name implies, the handset is plated in 18K gold with white leather covering it where the gold plating isn't. The tri-band GSM handset has support for the WCDMA 2,100MHz band for 3G data. Users can browse the web using Opera Mini on the 2.0-inch OLED display with 240x320 resolution.

12/22, 4:45pm

Needham on Storm post Xmas

Research in Motion is unlikely to sustain its early sales success for the BlackBerry Storm past the holidays, analyst Charlie Wolf of Needham Research estimates. The financial expert acknowledges that the Storm had a particularly strong launch but believes that the first touchscreen BlackBerry's sales will drop in early 2009 as a number of poor reviews damage its reputation beyond early adopters and holiday buyers. Other competitors have had also had more favorable reactions and are thought to stand a better chance of maintaining momentum and of avoiding early price drops.

12/22, 4:40pm

AT&T and Verizon swap

AT&T announced on Monday that its mobile division has finalized the swap of wireless assets with Verizon Wireless, as the agreement was approved by the FCC and Department of Justice. Under the deal, AT&T Mobility has acquired former Rural Cellular Corporation properties that were bought by Verizon Wireless. The deal includes licenses, network assets and subscribers in metropolitan and rural service areas (RSAs) in Burlington, VT, RSA-2 in New York, RSA-1 and RSA-2 in Vermont, RSA-2 and RSA-3 in Washington and portions of Kentucky's RSA-6. The deal gives AT&T its first presence in the state of Vermont.

12/22, 4:30pm

NEC LaVie L-series laptops

Computer monitor and PC maker NEC announced it will soon launch a new notebook series in Japan, with the LaVie L series. The fashion-focused notebook features a 15.4-inch LCD, offering 1280x800 resolution and will sport a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo chip along with 4GB of RAM. The 320GB hard disk drive will come pre-loaded with Windows Vista. The notebook's touchpad has a feature that allows it recognize handwriting gestures by users' fingers or scroll across web pages.

12/22, 4:10pm

Roku streams Netflix HD

Roku announced on Monday that its Netflix Player will now be capable of streaming high-definition content from Netflix. All new Roku players sold will include the update, while existing players will be automatically updated with the software that includes support for advanced compression codecs for no fee over the next few weeks.

12/22, 3:50pm

HTC 3rd Android Phone

HTC on Monday told the Economic Daily News that the company is already developing its third phone based on Google's Android platform. The smartphone producer's president Peter Chou provides little extra information about the phone itself but reveals the company is well into its efforts on Android phones, with the second model due as soon as April. Both should lead to the open-source OS being a "growth driver" for HTC next year compared to the company's usual stable of Windows Mobile phones, he says.

12/22, 3:05pm

Garmin disputes report

Garmin announced on Monday that it is disputing the sales figures and product rollout schedules published in a DigiTimesreport from the same day. In the report, it was said Garmin will ship 18 million GPS units in 2008, citing the company's Asia Pacific marketing director, Tony An, as the source for the information. The story also had Garmin's Android-powered and GPS-enabled nuvifone be released into the Taiwanese market in the second quarter of 2009, with Android-based handsets coming as early as the second half of 2009. Garmin did not dispute that Android-based handsets are indeed in the pipeline.

12/22, 2:45pm

Music Label Hulu Rival

The four major music labels are in the midst of negotiations that could result in a new, company-indendent service for music videos, an alleged source tipping Alley Insider says. EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner are said considering a joint venture that would put all their music videos in a central location. The effort would let them tighten their control over ads and potentially generate more revenue than YouTube as well as separate its content from amateur videos that happen to share similar music.

12/22, 2:05pm

Warner and YouTube split

Music videos from popular artists under the Warner Music label are disappearing from YouTube as talks regarding new licensing terms between the two companies have come to a halt, according to a Sunday New York Timesreport. Before the dispute, Warner Music had posted thousands of music videos from its artists on the Google-owned YouTube site, which accounted for billions of hits on the most popular video-sharing website. YouTube has informed its visitors on Friday via a blog post that the Warner Music videos, including user-generated videos with Warner music in the background, would begin disappearing.

12/22, 1:50pm

Lenovo dual-screen laptop

Computer maker Lenovo will unveil a new, unique notebook at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January in the form of the ThinkPad W700ds. The dual screen PC sports a 17-inch main display and an attached 10.6-inch secondary display that comes out from the right side. Aimed at photographers, graphic artists, application developers, and those who work in CAD fields, the W700ds also differs from the standard, single-screen W700 in that it offers a less costly 2.26GHz Core 2 Quad processor as well as the 2.53GHz Core 2 Extreme chip that serves as the main CPU in the standard notebook.

12/22, 1:15pm

LG LU1400 debuts in Korea

LG has released a new midrange cellphone, the LU1400. The phone's primary feature is its 2.8-inch LCD, which supports resolutions up to 800x480, and can rotate to a horizontal layout for tasks such as e-mail and instant messaging. Like a number of devices from South Korea the 1400 also supports the T-DMB standard, which provides mobile TV and it is better viewed in the widescreen ratio used by phones like the 1400.

12/22, 12:30pm

Intel X25-M 160GB Ships

Intel today said that it has started shipping a 160GB version of its X25-M solid-state drive for the mainstream. The new drive holds twice as much storage as the previous best but maintains the same speeds as other M-series drives, reading data well above hard drive speeds at 250MB per second and writing at a still-fast 70MB per second. Without moving parts, the storage has a lag time of just 85 microseconds versus the several milliseconds for rotating drives and consumes 150 milliwatts of power in typical use.

12/22, 11:50am

Microsoft Job Cut Rumor

A leak from a reported Microsoft insider and published Sunday may point to rare but substantial layoffs at the Windows developer. The company's alleged job cuts are described as "substantial" and are said to involve many feedback meetings that are actually attempts to screen out underperforming employees or those with relatively little usefulness. As much as 10 percent of Microsoft's finance department may be cut outright.

12/22, 11:00am

Samsung NC20 Leak

Samsung is planning to upsize its netbook line with a second model early next year, a leak suggests. The simply-titled NC20 would move from the 10-inch display of the NC10 to a 12-inch (likely 1280x800) panel and would importantly switch from Intel's common 1.6GHz Atom chip to a 1.3GHz VIA Nano, potentially improving its performance despite the lower clock speed. It should also carry the features of the high-end NC10 model, including its 1GB of memory, 160GB drive and 1.3-megapixel webcam.

12/22, 10:40am

LG sunlight-lit laptop LCD

LG Display announced on Monday it has introduced a prototype 14.1-inch LCD screen that reduces power consumption by as much as 75 percent when used outdoors on a sunny day. Users will have to manually switch between the conventional backlight unit mode and the new outdoor reflective mode by pressing a button. LG says visibility outdoors has also been addressed, as the new LCD has a 9:1 outdoor contrast ratio instead of the 2:1 or 3:1 usually found on conventional notebooks when they are placed outdoors.

12/22, 10:25am

Palm Gets Extra 100m

Palm on Monday said it has struck a deal with its recent investor Elevation Partners to receive an additional $100 million in equity. The deal involves a stock purchase at about a 31 percent value over Palm's actual stock price and lets the smartphone maker optionally sell the equivalent of $49 million in shares to outsiders at similar or better value before the end of March.

12/22, 9:45am

Sony VAIO 2009 Teaser

Sony late this weekend ratcheted up claims for its CES plans by introducing a teaser page for new VAIO notebook line. The page contains little information but vows to supply a "revolutionary" new model and promises to "change the way you look at laptops," suggesting a radical rethinking of Sony's existing lineup and of notebooks in general. The countdown is set to expire on January 9th local time and points to an unveiling on the 8th in the US.

12/22, 8:50am

Garmin Makes Android Phone

Garmin Asia Pacific marketing director Tony An today revealed that the company's nuvifone will just be the first device in a series of phones. Where the original touchscreen, GPS-focused phone is now said to be due in the spring, An adds that the firm will develop multiple phones based on Google's Android platform to ship sometime in the second half of 2009. Details of the phones themselves are unavailable but should likely focus heavily on GPS navigation and will be helped by the built-in presence of Google Maps.

12/22, 8:10am

Win XP Stays Through May

Microsoft will let PC makers continue to receive copies of Windows XP as late as May 30th, the company tellsCRN. Although Microsoft's official deadline for PC builders to order the system remains intact and will make companies submit orders by the original January 31st deadline, the software developer now plans to continue shipping copies until nearly mid-year and will let them take delivery on an as-needed basis, letting manufacturers keep a reserve of copies to continue offering systems with XP up to the later deadline.